What kind of person hasn’t been put behind bars! Priests and kings, scientists and poets… There is hardly a profession that hasn’t been represented in prison at one time or another. This is particularly true about political leaders who are known to while away difficult times behind bars. It is not incidental that the Soviet Union (part of which Ukraine used to be) was founded and governed by former convicts. I tried to analyze some historical data and discovered that practically all heroes of the past had been imprisoned. It was in prison that John the Baptist had been beheaded and Socrates drank hemlock in the presence of his followers.

After my elder son had once commented on Pinnochio being put to prison I started looking at famous fairy tales from a slightly different angle. I discovered that in children’s tales only positive characters found themselves behind bars while negative ones posed as their wardens.

So don’t worry too much, my fellow prisoner, nothing extraordinary has happened to you. We are not the first and not the last ones. In the eyes of the cops every Ukrainian citizen is either a criminal or at least a potential one. They would like to see people waiting in line outside prison. Why do you think was amnesty introduced? Mass media try to find some indications of State’s humanness in it. But the true reason is absolutely different and has nothing to do with lofty ideals. The simple truth is that prisons and camps are full, there is no room for new arrivals and shooting everyone is no longer as easy as it used to be. So from time to time petty offenders are released.

This doesn’t concern us - the category of our offenses won’t allow any hope for amnesty. However, I have a feeling that we’ll be free much sooner than all the idiots with their ‘open-hearted confessions’.

The only thing I find confusing is statistics. Whether you like it or not, it shows that life span is considerably reduced by imprisonment. The longer you stay behind bars the shorter your life may become. My cell-mates, I noticed, prefer to avoid thinking about this unconsoling fact. Their thoughts don’t go beyond trial and court room. It’s up to them, of course. You and me, in contrast to the rest, are far from indifferent to the state of our minds and bodies after we get out of this God-forsaken hole.

Let me give you a simple example. Suppose you are going for a long journey. What will your major concern be ? You are right: your car. Once it is in good condition you are safe and nothing can threaten your plans. Besides, taking good care of your car saves you a lot of trouble. Human body is like a car which having left your childhood has to reach old age without any severe breakages. The stronger and healthier your body, the higher its resistibility and capacity for work. Besides, the bodies we posses today are given to us for our deeds in the previous lives. Since early years we should develop our bodies and take good care of them. Even if somebody is destined to sacrifice himself, Gods expect him to have a beautiful body, not a decrepit and neglected one.

It is my strong conviction that everyone should work hard to strengthen and train his body. All the talk about being too busy, not having enough time or circumstances being stronger than ourselves are nothing but lame excuses to justify our helplessness and Its Highness Laziness. Human body can either develop or degrade depending on your attitude to it. No one has ever been able to achieve perfection by lolling about on the sofa like a vegetable.

In prison nobody is going to urge you to do sports. Cops are more likely to have a disapproving attitude. What good will it do to them if a prisoner is able to control himself and avoid stressful situations by doing physical exercises? The more fit he is the more difficult it is to persuade him.

I can’t speak for other inmates, but I myself have never had doubts that keeping fit in prison is a must. From the very first days of my detention I spent at least three hours a day doing physical exercises. For me it was a natural reaction of my body to psychological pressing during the so-called ‘discussions’ and interrogations. Besides, my practicing blows in the cell had taught my cell-mates to treat me in a civilized and polite manner.

I am not saying that I have been that perfect all the time. Quite often I thought that all my efforts were in vain and that doing nothing like most of my cell-mates was the best pastime in prison. However, every time I was overcome with laziness I told myself: what if tomorrow everything I strive for - my freedom, my life, my future - will depend on my physical fitness? And I made myself get up from the bunk.

At the beginning I relied on my intuition. My body ‘prompted’ the exercises I should do to keep healthy. Later I started to carefully plan my training like in the good old days when I had been a wrestling coach at the Kiev Institute of Sports.

To say that a cell has no facilities for doing sports is to say nothing. There is no fresh air, no room, sometimes no water to wash after the training. The simple things necessary for doing sports are not available in prison. Besides, your body is exhausted by lack or absence of food suitable for eating. You can’t plan your time because any moment you may be taken to another interrogation or transferred to a different cell. To put it in a nutshell, there are more than enough excuses not to do physical exercises for those who don’t want to.

However, where there is a will there is a way. Make an effort and stop paying attention to the surroundings. When you start training any obstacles become surmountable. It is like plunging into the sea and leaving behind all the gloomy thoughts and troubles.

I remember lying on the bunk after one of the ‘discussions’ when zelous cops went out of their way to persuade me that if I didn’t cooperate they would make sure I’d see the sky only through the barred window till the end of my life. No need to describe how I felt. Overcome by hopelessness and despair, I watched my cell-mates. A group of bugs after a short discussion decided to have dinner on my neighbor, a specialist in dismembering bodies.

Another cell-mate, toothless Aslan, was pacing up and down the cell - two steps forward, two steps back. He had been in prison for almost twenty two years but hadn’t lost optimism and belief in the better future. “We’ll get there!”- he kept repeating. I didn’t see any grounds for such optimism and could hardly share his enthusiasm. Aslan followed my gaze and also noticed the bugs who by then had already begun their evening meal.

- Oh, my God! Look at the amount of bugs on your belly! - he exclaimed.

- Let them choke on it, - the owner of the paunch murmured indifferently. - Aren’t you having your masochism tonight?

He called our daily physical workout ‘masochism’.

- I doubt it, - Aslan smirked. - Our mate is not in the mood.

His complacency started getting on my nerves. I dragged myself off the bunk and, giving way to a bug who was getting late for dinner, began practising short direct blows, first slowly but then faster and faster. Having wrapped my hand in an old T-shirt I kept hitting the concrete wall.

For most people on the outside doing sports is just a pleasant pastime. At weekends people get together to play volley-ball or football. Some prefer tennis jumping around the court in well-ironed outfit. The smarter ones sit in the shadow and retrieve balls for fifteen bucks an hour. Many like to jog in the parks every morning hoping to lose weight but unable to understand that the best way is to stop eating cakes and doughnuts in front of TV.

Physical exercise in prison is, first of all, a means of survival. When you are balancing between life and death there is no point discussing what is better - swimming or alpine skiing. The best is what helps you to survive. It is the only criterion, there are no others. If somebody has a different opinion, he is either a fool or has no intention to live long.

All the exercises I practiced in the cell can be divided in three groups.

Defence techniques

In prison there are unfortunately too many people eager to check how strong certain parts of your body are. For instance a rib or a collar bone. A healthy looking prisoner doesn’t fit the surroundings. The sight of him irritates both wardens and cell-mates who have melted margarine where God meant them to have brains. That is why my recommendation is to start with daily physical exercises in combination with breathing exercises. After a certain time you’ll feel your body has formed a defence shield and is able to take and stifle blows turning them into harmless patting. Such program also intensifies blood circulation and helps to strengthen will power and determination.

When I first started my physical workout at SPD inmates from the neighboring cells decided that I was being beaten by the wardens and started banging on metal doors of their cells. The noise was increased by heavy boots of the wardens tramping up and down the corridors trying to calm everyone down. Only after the news that I was OK and just having some training spread by the ‘prison telephone’ did inmates believe it and calmed down. With time everyone got used to my daily workouts and they stopped causing such a riot.

The workout I mentioned is known in the East as ‘iron shirt’. It has only one but serious drawback: it doesn’t provide defence for the head. Head is the most vulnerable part of the body. It doesn’t like to be disturbed. So writing in feltpen “Handle with care!’ on your forehead may well be the best protection. Unfortunately, cops swinging their clubs and wooden bats in front of your nose always aim at your head. They are convinced that the harder they hit you on the head the faster you’ll start thinking and behaving in the ‘proper way’. I don’t know what made them believe it’s the best method but such point of view is wide spread in human society.

So if you see a big fist aiming at your head, don’t hold up your coronal bones to it hoping that the hand of the attacker might be broken. The best thing to do is to avoid the direct attack. Dodging techniques are described in detail in all kinds of wrestling; they are not difficult to master. The most important is to be able to feel the distance and not to be afraid to get a blow when coming close to the adversary.

Things get more complicated if you are handcuffed which is often the case especially during the first days of detention. Cops, though armed to the teeth, prefer to be on the safe side. In such circumstances only one thing remains: take a position that provides the best protection for your head and makes it difficult to reach it. You can sacrifice any part of your body but not the head. Rely on your intuition and experience and try to reduce your losses to a minimum.

Attacking techniques

Everything that is happening and will happen to us has already happened before in human history. Wise people say: if you want to know the future, look in the past. Experience of the past generations teaches us that though defense techniques have always been important, attacking remains the best method of defense. A well-trained and unexpected blow has often been a key to the victory.

Wardens often boast of their vigilance and like to tell stories about their averting numerous escapes from prison. They modestly hold back the information about successful escapes as if they never happen. But denying facts, however unflattering, is silly.

If there was an award similar to American Oscar for the best escape from prison I would give it to a humble tractor driver from a provincial Ukrainian town who was accused of stealing some cheap gas from the garage where he worked. In prison cops tried to nail him for a major theft. At the interrogation the unfortunate tractor driver knocked out the investigator with a single blow, changed into his clothes and using the documents of the unconscious ‘arm of the law’ quietly left the prison.

Speaking about successful escapes I can’t help mentioning the most exquisite of them - an escape of four prisoners sharing the same cell at the Station of Preliminary Detention (SPD). I can imagine the faces of wardens when they opened the door for the routine morning shake-down and saw nobody there! The story goes like this: SPD is situated at the foot of a small hill. It is from the slope of that hill that the ‘guardian angel’ of one of the prisoners sent a well-aimed arrow with a rope attached to it through the prison window. The prisoners managed to saw the bars on the window and pulled themselves along the taut rope. A brilliant idea, don’t you agree?

The outcome of the story, however, was not that brilliant. Some of the jail-breakers were stupid enough to go home to change, see their families and have a good sleep. Early the following morning cops were at their door and the story repeated itself. What an inglorious end of the breathtaking story!

Unfortunately not everyone has such a guardian angel. Besides, to be able to escape from prison good physical shape is not the only requirement. Strong nerves are no less important. Not everyone has the nerve to change into cop’s clothes in the room that is not locked knowing that any moment somebody might come in. Nothing to say of escaping along the rope taut above the electrified barbed wire.

To prepare an escape is a very thorough and difficult task. But you should always be ready to escape. Outside prison you will have a much better chance to prove your guiltlessness, help your family and, if the worst comes to the worst, leave the country for ever. It is also very important to believe in the possibility of escape or in any other opportunity to get out of prison. Freedom picks up those who are worthy of it. Think of the two prisoners who managed to escape the death row in one of Dnepropetrovsk prisons.

It is not often, however, that you might encounter worthy inmates behind bars. So it looks like a professional well-trained blow is the only weapon you can count on in prison. It is our pledge of success, our hope for life.

If you have mastered a well-aimed blow, it doesn’t mean you have to kill. It is sufficient to scare your adversary, make him panic, paralyze his will. But always try to remember that you might be deliberately provoked to fight in order to give cops enough grounds for a new offense and a longer sentence.

A blow is most effective when it is accurate and fast. This requires elementary knowledge of human physiology. In conflict situations people usually waste a lot of efforts without tangible result. In a close fight even the slightest inaccuracy can be fatal. This is particularly true about conflicts in a prison cell due to the following reasons:

1. There is practically no space in the cell which makes short straight jabs and hooks the most effective;
2. Every prisoner dreams of being released as soon as possible. Rash actions can only increase your prison sentence. That’s why blows should leave no marks. From this point of view a direct forehead blow or blows on the hairy part of the head are recommended. Quite popular is a direct short blow under the heart, two fingers below the nipple. Theoretically such blow if performed correctly can cause a heart failure. However, I have never seen it happen in reality, either the performers weren’t skilled enough or the attacked ones had all the luck. The same spot, below the heart, is often aimed at with a sharp spoke used as a decisive argument in a heated discussion.
3. It is, however, unlikely that you will have to fight with your opponent till he stops breathing. Usually a fight is meant to demonstrate what you are capable of. What’s more, after the fight its participants still have to share the same cell. So psychological suppression of the opponent is even more important than your fighting skills. Your opponent has to realize that bullying you won’t do him any good.

The less you get involved in conflict situations the better it is for you and your fellow prisoners. Unfortunately not everyone understands this. However, since ancient times masters of martial arts have always stressed that a fight avoided is a fight won. Who knows, maybe tomorrow your well-being will depend on a person you hate today, or you will have to unite your efforts against some common danger. Remember the truth of an old adage: ‘There are no sworn enemies or friends. There are only eternal interests’. Life is unpredictable, every new turn may bring something new and unexpected.

Practicing blows during daily workouts can be subdivided into the following categories:

- warming up exercises and exercises for the parts of the body used to strike the opponent (press-ups on the fists, for example, 100-120 times a day);

- shadow boxing;

- training with a partner;

- practicing blows on the makeshift punching bag or on a cell-mate wrapped in blankets.

It is very important to practice blows or one particular blow every day, even when there is no opportunity to have a full training. It should become a habit just like brushing your teeth or having meals.

Experience prompted me a simple principle: it is better to use boxing techniques when dealing with wrestlers and visa versa - wrestling techniques with boxers. The point is to make your adversary nervous which is easier to achieve using unusual techniques. When a person gets nervous he starts making mistakes. Knowing basics of judo and free-style wrestling is very handy in prison. When you disagree with a fellow prisoner knocking him out is not the only way to show it. Just demonstrate a few moves for him to see what you are capable of. No conflict, no fighting, but the message is clear. No more stupid attempts at proving your point.

Stamina-building exercises

These exercises are the basis for any technique. It’s futile to start coaching a person who begins panting after five minutes of walking.

The simplest and at the same time the most effective exercise is running. It can be practiced in the prison court yard and even in the small cell. You can relieve the monotony of jogging by alternating different types of running like running backwards or with your feet touching your buttocks or trying to touch your chest with your knees (a good preparatory exercise for practicing knee blows). The list can be endless. The most important thing is to understand why you are doing each particular exercise and what it helps to achieve. Blind imitation of movements won’t give any positive results.

Running can be combined not only with physical but with meditation exercises as well. You must always remember, however, that running puts a certain pressure on cardio-vascular system. So don’t practice running exercise when you are unwell, better do some stretching exercises to make you more supple.

Winter of 1997-1998 was quite cold. More than ten inmates died ‘their natural death’ - either of cold or the flu. Prison authorities don’t like to disclose such information, the number of the deceased could have been larger. We stuck all the cracks in the window frame with paper and then covered them with paste made of prison bread. But my cell-mates were still trembling with cold under the thin blankets. Only two people from our cell continued to go out for daily walks - a 56year old uncle Grisha who had a serious heart attack the previous year and myself. By the way he looked I concluded that sport didn’t use to be a regular part of his daily routine. He could have played football with friends couple of times in a year. However, uncle Grisha had a much better understanding of the importance of taking physical exercise in prison than most of the younger prisoners. The temperature outside was 28C of frost. We tired ourselves out jogging silently around the perimeter of a small court yard. When it was time to go back to the cell, we returned there naked to the waist and poured a pail of ice-cold water over our heads. The cell-mates watching us felt even colder and we were very proud to be different from them.

In one of the previous chapters I have already described prison shower room. Far from being perfect it still was almost a luxury but only once a week. I am used to taking a shower every day so the only way out for me was to wash myself with cold water by the tap in the cell. I realized that notions ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ are in fact abstract and exist only in your imagination. If you persuade yourself that the water is warm you will start enjoying washing even in the ice-cold water. It is easier than it seems. Much depends on your will power and consciousness.

In prison the best time for cold water treatment is early morning when most of the cell-mates are still asleep and nobody is in the way. Trying to keep up personal hygene standards behind bars is extremely difficult but it pays off. Those prisoners who made no effort to keep clean and tidy (many wouldn’t even wash the dishes after meals eating every time from a dirty stinking bowl) suffered from numerous skin infections and were sure to contract any illness that came their way.

If you have decided to take exercises it is no problem to work out a program that will suit your needs and circumstances. Besides, what is always available in prison is time. So it is your desire to feel physically fit that matters most. The rest is of minor importance.

I have already mentioned the problem of deteriorating eyesight in prison. To prevent this problem it is worthwhile adding yoga gymnastics for the eyes to your daily program. Everyone who practiced yoga exercises in prison knows how difficult it is to learn to concentrate on the exercise in a tiny prison cell. It is much easier to meditate on the outside, you can always find a solitary place, go to the river bank or to the mountains. Prison, of course, can’t offer you such an opportunity. Don’t be despaired at that. With every attempt, every training you will start acquiring experience that will prompt you the best way to achieve the required condition.

Some of the yoga exercises are particularly important in prison conditions like, for example, pulling in your stomach and training abdomen muscles which help to improve the intestine function. Good functioning of the digestive track is essential not only for your own benefit but for all your cell-mates as well. Taking into consideration the size of the cell, the ’toilet’ is practically next to the bunks and somebody’s stomach problem becomes everyone’s concern. This involves some aspects of prison diet which we will discuss in the following chapter.